The videos I'm going to link to here, show both the best and the worst of Israel. If it weren't for Israeli peace activists, people who truly want what's best for both Israelis and Palestinians, these films would not exist. According to the NY Times:
While journalists have found themselves scouring the Internet in search of video from protests across the Middle East recently, one protest movement, by small groups of villagers opposed to Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank, has gotten far less attention.
Even so, there is no lack of footage of the weekly protests that my colleague Isabel Kershner described last year as a sort of slow-motion, “part-time intifada.” That’s true in part because an Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has distributed video cameras to Palestinians to make sure the demonstrations do not go undocumented.
But while the existence of these videos is a tribute to the Israeli peace movement, what's in the videos shows Israel at its worst: Israeli soldiers can be just as oppressive as Bull Connor's police who brutalized Civil Rights activists in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960's.
Connor stayed in the national news in the spring of 1963 when the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition (SCLC) brought Project C (for Confrontation) to Birmingham. The police tried to control thousands of nonviolent protesters, including children, with high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs.
http://www.pbs.org/...
I'm writing this diary to bring my daughter's experiences to DailyKos. She is on a 2 month trip to Israel/Palestine. She is beginning to write a blog on her experiences and asked in her last entry that we try to publicize these videos.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/...
http://www.btselem.org/...
http://www.btselem.org/...
http://www.machsomwatch.org/...
Right now, my Jewish-American daughter is in Ramallah, talking to people there and learning about the city. She says it's very international with one exception -- the Israeli government doesn't allow Israeli citizens to cross over to the West Bank.
My daughter, American and Jewish -- had no such problem crossing into the West Bank. Nor did her friend, also American and Jewish, who's been there for several months.
If you want to follow her journey -- here's the link to her blog.
http://talebearer88.tumblr.com/
A disclaimer here -- while we agree with our daughter on the ultimate goal, and while we agree that the occupation and settlements of Palestinian lands and Israeli treatment of Palestinians is unconscionable, we don't agree with everything she says. After all, she's 22 (almost 23) and we're, well....a fair amount older, so it's not surprising that we have a different take on things at times.